InsAph

Inscriptions of Aphrodisias Project

History and Bibliography of the Inscriptions

The first study devoted to the history of the inscriptions of Aphrodisias was
a small volume by J. M. R. Cormack, Notes on the History
of the Inscribed Monuments of Aphrodisias (Reading,
1955), written while he was preparing the inscriptions recorded by
his teacher, William Calder, for publication (as MAMA 8). The relevance of such material was
illuminated by the work of Louis Robert; this was reflected in the discussion of
visitors to Caria in J. and L. Robert, La Carie II, and to Aphrodisias in Hellenica 13,
109-16; the background to one group of texts was set out by J. M. Reynolds, A&R Appendix II, 147-8. Since then, new material has emerged; what follows is an
account of the current state of our knowledge.

In the Byzantine period, probably in the ninth century, at least two,
possibly three epigrams inscribed at the site were included in the Greek Anthology
(Anthologia Palatina 9.704, 16.35, and perhaps 7.690); see
H. Beckby, Anthologia Graeca
(Munich, 1957) I.2, 75 ff. They may may have been transcribed from the
stone by a Byzantine copyist; but it is also possible that they circulated separately
within the literary tradition.

1705-16

William Sherard(See DNB entry), while British Consul at Smyrna, visited the site on
two occasions; his own and related notebooks are in the British Library, bound as
BL Add. 10101-2. Understanding of his copies has been transformed by the work of
Michael Crawford; see: M. H. Crawford, Diocletian's
jigsaw puzzles: autopsy and progress, in T. P. Wiseman (ed.), Classics
in Progress (London: The British Academy, 2002),
145-163 and M. H. Crawford, William Sherard
and the Prices Edict, Revue Numismatique
159 (2003), 83-107.

1705, 19 to 23 August

Sherard visited several sites,
including Geira/Aphrodisias, accompanied by Rev. John Tisser, Mr. Cutts Lockwood, Mr. John Lethieullier and Dr. Antonio Picenini. Picenini kept a diary
(BL Add. 6269, ff 38-49) and made copies (BL Add. 10102, ff. 12-53; Aphrodisias
13-36); he also transcribed the copies made by Tisser (10102, ff. 53-81,
Aphrodisias 53-56v, 61v-68, 71-77). Sherard made some copies of his own (BL Add.
10101 ff 9-21, Aphrodisias 9-16v); he also transcribed the copies made by Picenini
(ff. 22-67, Aphrodisias 24-48v). The resultant MS (BL Add. 10101, ff. 9-78v), is
referred to by Boeckh as Cod. Ask 1.
Picenini also gave a copy of the inscriptions he had copied to E. Spanheim, the
Prussian Ambassador to London, and this is now in the Staatsbibliothek, Berlin (MS
Spanhem. 11); this was also consulted by Boeckh in the preparation of Corpus Inscriptionum
Graecarum II.2.

1716

Sherard went on an expedition
around June 20 with Rev. Dr. S.
Lisle, (BL Add. 10101 ff. 68-78); he did not visit Aphrodisias. He set off on
a second expedition, from 5-25 July, with Dr. Lisle, Mr. Vandervecht, and J.C., probably Jos.
Clotterboke (10101, 119-131v, Cod. Ask. 3) as well as Bernard Mould (whose diary is BL
Add. 65412); this took him to Aphrodisias on 6 July, and almost all the
inscriptions copied on that expedition are from there (10101, 120-131).

Picenini's and Sherard's copies were used by
E. Chishull,
Antiquitates Asiaticae Christianam Aeram
antecedentes (London, 1728). Sherard's papers were
consulted in London by Karl Müller on
behalf of Boeckh, for the preparation of Corpus
Inscriptionum Graecarum II.2: see K. Müller, Briefwechsel zwischen August Boeckh und Karl Otfried Müller
(Leipzig, 1883).

1750, 1-3 October

Robert 'Palmyra' Wood(See DNB entry) visited the site and copied some twenty texts; these
copies were never published, but are all of texts which have been published
elsewhere. The papers are now in the possession of the Society for the Promotion
of Hellenic Studies http://www.sas.ac.uk/icls/Hellenic/, who
kindly allowed us to study and copy them. See C. A.
Hutton, The travels of Palmyra Wood in 1750-51, Journal of Hellenic Studies 30 (1927), 102-128,
119; L. Robert, Hellenica 13, 114.

1820s

H.P. Borrell(See DNB
entry), resident in Smyrna, obtained an inscription from Aphrodisias, a
copy of which he sent to Boeckh: see D. Whitehead,
From Smyrna to Stewartstown: a numismatist's epigraphic
notebook, Proceedings of the Royal Irish
Academy 99c (1999), 73-117, 104-5

1840

Sir Charles Fellows(See DNB
entry) visited Aphrodisias; his copies tend to be unreliable compared,
for example, to those of Sherard. He published them very promptly, in C. Fellows, An Account of Discoveries in
Lycia (London, 1841); they were used in the
addenda published in CIG II.3. Of these a page is preserved among the papers of
Samuel kept in the Greek and Roman Department of the British Museum (to whom I am
grateful for access). Page 515 has been annotated (in pencil), 'The hand of Sir C.
Fellows'. It contains the transcriptions of two texts headed 'Priene' (P.Le Bas,
W.H.Waddington, Voyage archéologique en Grèce et en Asie Mineure, fait
pendant les années 1834 et 1844 (Paris 1847-1877) 205, Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum 2904), and then the heading
'Aphrodisias', followed by the transcriptions of MAMA 8, 550 and 564 (published by
Fellows as nos. 48, 47).

1842

J. K. Bailie(See DNB
entry) visited the site. In an account of his visit, J. K. Bailie, Researches amongst the inscribed
monuments of the Graeco-Roman Era in certain ancient sites of Asia
Minor, Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy
21 (1843), 11-65, with 76-86, 32, he states clearly that he
copied 'only fifteen or twenty of these records'; of the forty-one inscriptions
which he subsequently published, J.
K. Bailie, Fasciculus
Inscriptionum Graecarum (London and Dublin,
1846), at least twenty are clearly from earlier publications;
for his unreliability, see L. Robert, Hellenica 13, 152-4. He also used copies
supplied to him by H. P. Borrell;
see D. Whitehead, From Smyrna to
Stewartstown: a numismatist's epigraphic notebook, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 99c (1999), 73-117.

1856

1870

W. H. Waddington published inscriptions copied by himself and
Philippe Le Bas as Le Bas and
Waddington, Inscriptions grecques et latines receuillies en
Grèce et en Asie Mineure (Paris, 1870); he also
republished inscriptions not included in CIG IV, published by Franz, Bailie, Henzen and Leake.

1874

K. G. Anthopoulos
recorded four texts formerly from Aphrodisias but by then at Pirlibey, and published them, Anthopoulos
, Homeros III (1875), 80;
it was presumably he who sent a squeeze of one of these texts to A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus, who published it in Athenische Mitteilungen 5 (1880), 340, no.
12.

1889

O. Liermann
republished a substantial group of inscriptions from the site in Analecta epigraphica et agonistica, Dissertationes
Philologicae Halenses X (Halle, 1889).

1893

W. Kubitschek and W. Reichel spent sixteen days
at Aphrodisias, and also recorded texts at Bingeç and Pirlibey. They published
sixteen of the c. 200 texts which they copied and or squeezed, Kubitschek
and Reichel
, Inscriptiones Graecae, Anzeiger der kaiserlicher Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Wien
(1893), 100-3. Some of their copies were used by L. Robert, Les
gladiateurs dans l'Orient grec nos. 158, 159, 160, 161. J. M.
R. Cormack published a further selection, Inscriptions from Aphrodisias, in 1964. Cormack also used their notebooks in his preparation of MAMA 8. Their
notebooks (one by Reichel and two by Kubitschek) and squeezes are kept by the
Kleinasiatische Kommission in Vienna, to whom we are most grateful for access.

1898

W. R. Paton(See DNB entry) visited the site with a grant from the Society for the
Promotion of Hellenic Studies; he published the texts which he copied in the area
in an article W. R.
Paton, Sites in
Eastern Karia and South Lydia, Journal of Hellenic
Studies 20 (1900), 57-80.

1904

P. Gaudin excavated at
Aphrodisias; see M. Collignon, Notes
sur les fouilles executées à Aphrodisias par M. Paul Gaudin, Comptes rendus des séances de l’année de l’Académie des inscriptions
et belles-lettres (1904), 703-11. Gaudin copied and
squeezed over 200 inscriptions; these were published from his records by T. Reinach, Inscriptions
d'Aphrodisias, Revue des Etudes Grecques 19
(1906), 79-150, 205-98; Reinach also consulted the Kubitschek and Reichel records. Gaudin's squeezes
are now in the possession of the Sorbonne, to whom we are very grateful for access
and photographs.

1927

1934

W. M. Calder, with L. I. Higby and A. B. Birnie, recorded
inscriptions at Aphrodisias as part of the Monumenta Asiae
Minoris Antiqua project. A second expedition, by W.H. Buckler and L.
Robert, was planned for 1935, but was prevented by the political situation. One
text was published by
Calder
, Silius Italicus in Asia, Classical Review 49 (1935), 216-7; one was sent
to L. Robert by W. H. Buckler, and published in Les gladiateurs dans l'Orient grec, no. 156; another was published by J. M. R. Cormack, Epigraphic evidence for the water
supply of Aphrodisias, The Annual of the British
School at Athens 49 (1954), 9-10. All the texts
which the 1934 expedition copied were eventually published, after the deaths of
Buckler and Calder, by J. M. R.
Cormack.

1954

1960

Sculptural and inscribed fragments found during building works were published by
A. Giuliano, Rilievo da
Aphrodisias in onore di Zoilos, AnnScuolArchAth 38-9 (1959-60), 389-401

1962

All the texts which the 1934 MAMA
expedition had copied were published, after the deaths of Buckler and
Calder, by J. M. R. Cormack, Monumenta Asiae Minoris
Antiqua, VIII (Manchester, 1962). For a full and
critical analysis of this volume see L. Robert, Hellenica 13 (Paris, 1965), esp.
109-238.

1962

An inscription from Aphrodisias now in the Vienna Museum was published by
Rudolf Noll, Die griechischen und lateinischen
Inschriften der Wiener Antikensammlung, Vienna
(1962, republished 1986).

1964

J. M. R. Cormack transcribed copies made by Hirschfeld, Kubitschek and Reichel from the archives in Vienna,
as Cormack
, Inscriptions from Aphrodisias, The Annual of the British School at Athens 59
(1964), 16-29; this provoked a very full analysis by L. Robert, Inscriptions
d'Aphrodisias, Antiquité Classique 36
(1966), 337-432 (= L.
Robert, Opera
Minora Selecta, VI, 1-56).

The Current Excavations

The New York University excavation began in 1961. Reports on the excavations appeared
in the American Journal of Archaeology, Anatolian Studies, Fasti archaeologici, the
Illustrated London News and Türk
Arkeoloji Dergisi. A full bibliography up to 1986 was published in

There have been regular reports, since 1990, in the Kazi Sonuçlari
Toplantisi, published annually in Ankara and, since 1995, in the American Journal of Archaeology. A bibliography can be found at
the excavation website http://www.nyu.edu/projects/aphrodisias/